As the partial government shutdown entered its second day Wednesday, with no quick end in sight, the repercussions were being felt well beyond the shuttered national parks and nearly 800,000 furloughed federal employees.

The consequences ranged from annoyances (the National Zoo had to shut down its panda cam) to quite serious: Kids with cancer couldn't get into clinical trials at the National Institutes of Health that offer their last best hope. The E-Verify system was suspended, so employers couldn't check the immigration status of new hires. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had to shut down its system for tracking outbreaks of deadly diseases across multiple states. And prospective homeowners faced long delays on federally processed mortgage applications.

Starting to feel public pressure, the House Republicans who forced the government closure as part of their quixotic quest to kill Obamacare offered to reopen some of the most popular programs, such as parks and the Department of Veterans Affairs, on a piecemeal basis.

That might spare them some political heat. But it's like seizing a school bus full of kids then offering to release the cutest ones. Some of the serious problems just mentioned wouldn't be touched, nor would myriad others that will pop up in coming days. It was swiftly rejected.

The mounting toll will increasingly expose the shutdown's foolishness. The sooner the Republicans free all their hostages, the better.

So it was not lost on America's critics that the United States and Italy were put in the same boat in recent days, thanks to similar political crises: the shutdown here, and the chaos caused in Rome when former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi pulled his center-right party out of the ruling coalition, leaving no majority to run the country.

Nor is it being lost on people that Italy managed to get out of the boat first. It turned out that the tantrum thrown by Berlusconi, an erratic billionaire and convicted tax evader, was not backed by the more level-headed people in his party. So the party quickly did an about-face.

Of all of the consequences of the shutdown not considered by its instigators, the worst could be the damage to America's reputation abroad.

For generations, U.S. leaders have sought to portray an image of strength and probity as they pursued causes ranging from standing up to tyranny, to playing the role of honest broker, to creating democratic models that others could emulate.

Now the image is one of laughingstock. President Obama had to cut short a trip to Asia next week because the shutdown left the White House short of people to do the advance work, and it might have to cancel altogether, pulling out of an important regional summit.

Foreign leaders — including those in Iran, which is contemplating a major shift away from its belligerent posture — wonder aloud whether the United States can be trusted to negotiate anything requiring congressional approval.

These are real costs of the shutdown, hard to quantify but impossible to overstate. When Congress proves incapable of even its most basic functions — keeping the government running and paying its bills — it undermines the American brand abroad, and with it the nation's ability to be the shining beacon to which others look.

Debt-limit fight threatens recovery

One way to think of the government shutdown is as Congress imposing modest economic sanctions on the American people.

Economists estimate that a shutdown of a few days will reduce economic growth to 2% in the current quarter, from an already anemic 2.2%. Even gauging the impact will be difficult. The Labor Department has already announced that it won't be able to produce its usual jobs report this Friday.

The shutdown will pack a particular wallop in areas with large concentrations of federal workers — places such as Charleston, S.C., El Paso, Texas, and, of course, Washington, D.C. That's unlikely to tip the economy back into recession, but investors might not be as fortunate.

So far, the financial markets have been taking the shutdown in stride, with the Dow Jones average drifting only modestly downward since its record high on Sept. 18.

Attitudes could change fast, though, if the shutdown morphs into a crisis over the government's ability to pay its debts. That much more calamitous event — which Wall Street considers so destructive that it won't happen — will occur later this month if Congress fails to raise the nation's borrowing limit.

Maybe the traders are right. Maybe the politicians will avert disaster at the 11th hour, as they usually do. But markets make big moves on big surprises and financial uncertainty, and debt repudiation would bring both. If this circus continues much longer, you might not want to look at your 401(k).

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